I think you should add buttons, yes. The text is hard to read.
I also think pure white and red are "off-theme", they don't really fit the look of the rest of the menu and the game. Red draws a lot of attention to itself, and I don't think you need that much attention-grabbing in this case, since the player will already be looking at the text/button by the time it turns red. It just needs to be clearly distinct from the white and from the background, but you don't need to go as far as red to achieve that.